Talking about consciousness is a fashionable subject these days. As if it is a new religion, trend or fashion. A lot of so-called “spiritual” people use it to judge others as being less “evolved” and ignorant.

I say, bleep that!

Consciousness is a simple concept that a 5-year-old child can understand. Sandy, the dog is conscious, whereas Teddy the teddy bear is not. Sandy runs around and responds, Teddy just sits there and does not move. When children play-act, they know they are pretending. It’s not real. When the plastic scissors are used to cut Teddy’s hair, they know it is just a game!

Many adults forget this simple truth and go through life play-acting for real!

Just believing in something does not make you more conscious. You can believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. However, belief alone won’t make you more conscious, nor the fairies more real.

Think about it this way. When you go to the hospital for an operation, and the anesthesiologist gives you drugs to “put you to sleep” while they operate, you go through stages from conscious to unconscious where you are not aware of anything.

Sleepwalking through life?

Zombie movies are very popular because so many people go through life like they are a sleepwalking zombie. They are in a constant sleep-like mild trance. Long ago, they suffered through suppression or abuse that fixated their attention. As time passes the original injury is long forgotten, however, their mental attention remains fixated on it as an unsolved problem. Too many of these issues lead to a sense of overwhelming malaise and an inability to be fully present to their surroundings. This mild trance makes them less aware, or in other words, less conscious.

If the majority of their attention is stuck on a long-ago problem, that remains unsolved, how much attention do they have available for today’s challenges? Or for that matter, how much attention is available for other people’s difficulties? Not much right?

Often these people complain about not feeling “present” and experience an inability to concentrate, focus, rest, and relax. Their minds are hyperactive one moment, and then immobilized the next moment by debilitating depression. Following a lot of effort, these people achieve a temporary sense of calm, but it doesn’t last. The slightest provocation jolts the hyperactive mental cycle again. If this is describing you, the way out is to become more aware of where your attention is fixated, doing something to heal, and over time you will improve and become more conscious.

You may be wondering if you can just pop a pill?

Psychedelic drugs and peak experiences?

Sure, you can try to alter your consciousness via drugs or other high-intensity experiences. It sounds very appealing to swallow a tonic or jump on the spot yelling chu-chu while waving your arms around. Surely then, you can avoid all the hard work of changing your nasty behavior and the labor-intensive process of actually becoming a better person by getting conscious quick! Just like get-rich-quick, get-spiritual-quick, get-conscious-quick is seductive as a shortcut, but does it work? Yes, and no.

Yes, these methods do lead to a temporary altered state of consciousness, however, is it sustainable and do they lead to better behavior? Do they make you a better person? Do your results improve?

Results can be measured, which means you can track an improvement in consciousness by looking at your results. Owning your results enables you to own your consciousness.

Maybe you are a selfish prig who only thinks of yourself, and after taking a psychedelic drug, you realize that there are other people whose needs matter as much as yours. Your consciousness expands, and you know that we are all interconnected, fellow travelers on spaceship earth and that if you sink one side of the ship, we all go down together? If this increase in awareness sticks, and it leads to a lasting change in your point of view and behavior, then congratulations you have altered your consciousness for the better. On the other hand, most people only experience a temporary increase in awareness and upon returning to their normal environment, old habits take over and before long it is as if nothing happened.

Surely, there must be more sustainable ways to make lasting improvements?

Yoga and Meditation?

Yoga and meditation offer a path to increase your body awareness, calm your mind and detach from the emotions of life’s roller coaster. Daily rituals and practice have many benefits. When combined with deliberate right-action and problem-solving, Yoga is very connecting and meditating brings a sense of calm, oneness, and insight. On the other hand, as with any practice, it can be used to support unethical and wrong action. Imagine the wife beating, serial cheating, husband who feels guilty and ashamed of their wrong actions. To alleviate their racing mind, and to dissipate the feelings of worthlessness, they meditate to detach from their emotion and quell the inner disquiet. Meditation offers temporary relief. However, lasting peace and serenity can only be achieved through diligent right action.

The application of right action includes taking right actions into the future as well as righting the wrong actions one has taken in the past. This can be done by making amends.

Seeing what cannot be seen with your eyes?

Awareness of one’s impact on others and their impact on you is beyond what you can see with your eyes. The more you can see in your mind’s eye, the more awareness, i.e., consciousness you develop. Consider the primate who is aware of their social relationships in the group. They keenly pay attention to every member jostling, competing and social game. However, when a member, steals their bunch of bananas behind their back, if they don’t see, it didn’t happen. They will notice the bananas gone. However, their ability to imagine what happened in their mind’s eye is limited. To this degree, their consciousness is limited primarily to what they see.

People who are fixated on their physical senses will experience limited perception other than what they see with their eyes. They often think to themselves “I will believe it when I see it.” However, as your consciousness increases your ability to see it in your mind’s eye, to creatively imagine, and to see a group’s social dynamics, motivations, hierarchy, and cliques go up!

The near-death experience?

Another surefire way to expand one’s consciousness is to go through a near-death experience. The history books are full of examples of people who had close brushes with death and in the moment of their imminent demise, realized that there is more to life than the constant self-interested, me too, merry go round.

The best investment you can make?

I believe that the best investment you can make is in activities, experiences, and education that challenges your beliefs, thinking, and expands your consciousness. You are alive and free to the degree you are conscious.

I have traveled to more than 500 cities in 54 countries and invested more than 30 years studying, analyzing and researching what consciousness is and how to develop my own. Rather than study how consciousness forms in the brain, I have focused on what it is, how to expand it and what are the key factors that stimulate and cause a quantum leap in consciousness.

When an entire society goes through a collective quantum leap in consciousness, a golden age of innovation, wealth, and prosperity ensues. The most notable example was the Renaissance of the 14th to 16th centuries.

My passion has been to discover how to stimulate our own Renaissance — a personal Golden Age and then to share it with others. Everything is better with friends!

I have found that the quest to create peak-experiences, combined with some analysis of what happened and why have led to higher understanding. Most people have experienced a peak experience state, however for many; it happens by chance.

There are deliberate steps you can take. I have discovered how to create the circumstances to invoke peak experiences anytime I choose and how to make it a way of life.

Would it surprise you to know that consciousness can be categorized and measured on a scale that can be extended to cover all the significant areas of life? Money, income, wealth, relationships, business, leadership, health, career, etc. No, there isn’t a unique NASA designed instrument to measure it! Even better, we can all measure it with some simple education and a system that makes it easy!

How? Easy! By looking at and categorizing your results, then work backward to your drivers and eventually your consciousness. My partner of 13 years, the late Anjou MacPherson and I created a system known as The OPTIMA Zones of Human Behavior & Peak Performance. The system explains the cycle of life, why we behave the way we do and why some people are more successful, happy and fulfilled while others seem to be caught up in an endless cycle of struggle for mere existence.

Have you ever wondered why some people struggle and are unhappy, while others seem to be in the right place at the right time are happy and fulfilled?

Most therapies, medical practices, and self-improvements systems focus on identifying dysfunction, treating it and becoming functional. Health is often viewed as the absence of disease.

The OPTIMA Zones were created to look at life holistically, from the big picture, ultimate, optimum and what is possible in an ideal condition and then work backward to identify varying stages of suboptimum all the way to nonexistence. Identifying where one is at versus where one could be if conditions were optimum, help to determine the best possible path to realizing the full potential in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort.

Without a holistic system, one would be lost without a map. If you have no idea where you are and no idea where you are going, then you would be lost and don’t even know it.

The system focuses on measuring outcomes and what creates these outcomes. Improving performance can only happen when one starts with a baseline of performance to improve. It is important to note that this is a non-religious system used by people who maintain their current religious practice (for example Christian, Hindu, Buddist, Muslim, Sikh, etc.) while using the system. In fact, many users of the OPTIMA Zones report that their current religious practice is strengthened.

Money can buy you a lot of things and experiences including education, opportunities, freedom, comfort, the necessities of life, luxuries, etc.

Some say money can’t buy you happiness and love. I say it can, to a point. Try being poor and see how you like it.

If you are a nasty person who is very unattractive on the inside, money can buy you the appearance of love, and someone to spend your time with who is a real beauty.

Studies show that beyond a minimum amount of money to meet your minimum needs for food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, education and some leisure time, money’s utility to make us happy diminishes. What money can buy you is control over your time. From that point on you are free to choose how you spend your time. If you are like most people in Richland, living in the Rat Race you suffer from Time Poverty.

The real luxury in life is the time do what you want with the people you love.

Discover five simple steps to create your own luck!

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be luckier than others? Maybe you feel lucky. Congratulations! Or on the other hand, perhaps you feel that lady luck never comes knocking on your door.

I have often wondered what luck is and if there were a way to change my luck. I have spent a lot of time and energy in pursuit of answers to that question.

I grew up in a good, hard working family that never seemed to have much luck. Life was challenging and a constant battle for survival. Money was hard to come by and outside forces were always wreaking havoc on our dairy farm, our animals, and our finances. There were diseases, bugs, floods, and droughts. It felt like a never-ending onslaught of bad luck. No wonder people who are connected to the land can develop a sense of superstition, that some outside force is against us.All outside forces are having a very real effect on our quality of life.

Due to thrift, our own garden, a few fruit trees, the cows and chickens we had enough food. At least that is the way I remember it. Birthdays and Christmas were not a time for luxuries or gifts — but practical things like clothes and working boots. Or perhaps a new school uniform. Oh, and by the way, the school didn’t have a uniform — it was just cheaper to wear the same clothes every day.

Money was always hard to come by, and I learned that to get ahead in life I would have to work hard, sacrifice, live with pain and suffering and exert massive effort.

But who says this is true?

There is a huge difference between applying effort to a goal or purpose and struggling to make ends meet. So why are we told so often that it is noble to sacrifice and struggle only to make it barely?

The underlying belief is that life, resources, and even love are scarce and in short supply. That we have to compete with other people for them, to win at all costs and that we have to earn love, respect, and acceptance.

What if this is a lie?

What if life, resources, and love are abundant? Free and all around us? What if we don’t have to struggle at all, but to accept that there is a lack of knowledge about how to live a life of effortless FLOW. Think about the possibilities. All of the desirable things in life flowing in your direction.

Knowledge seems to be the missing element.

We do have to make choices, sometimes tough ones. At the same time is there an alternative to sacrificing, endless hard work and barely getting by?

Could it, in fact, be easy? Could we create our own luck? I say YES!

The absence of luck could be referred to as struggle. A struggle is an effort infused with negative emotion, desperation, and attachment. If we replace the negative association and attachment with positive expectation, certainty, and detachment from outcomes we may experience more ease, peace, and FLOW. We will still apply hard work and effort. However, the outcome will be flowing and not struggle.

Most people don’t realize that our life is a reflection of our innermost feelings, beliefs, and attitudes. That means when we change on the inside, our outside results change. This is how what we think and feel in the present moment determines the outcomes in our future.

Think about it this way: Accepting responsibility for your life means taking ownership that you create your destiny. If you experience struggle, it is created by you and how you feel about your circumstances. Switch your feelings, and you will change from struggle, to flow. Such a simple concept and yet very profound.

In other words, it is your feelings that make the difference! Your feelings are the key drivers of your actions and your actions are what creates your outcomes in life.

Because we are trained, programmed and conditioned to struggle we often accept this as normal and don’t realize that an alternative way of life is possible. A reality of abundance and effortless flow is not even considered because our conditioning doesn’t even allow us to recognize it.

There is a way out of constant struggle where we create our own luck. Here are the steps:

The first step:

Consider that struggle isn’t fait accompli and to identify all the areas where you are struggling. This takes courage and the willingness to accept the responsibility that you are causing the struggle and you have the power to choose something different to move into more flow. Once you accept that, you know with absolute certainty that over time, all struggle can be eliminated from your life.

The second step:

Write a list of all the areas of life where you are struggling. Don’t be shy or modest. List them all, and even the ones hiding in the secret corners of your life.

The third step:

Prioritize your list to arrive at an order of importance to focus on one area at a time. The best approach is to resolve one area before beginning on the next one. If you try to do too much at once, it is easy to become overwhelmed, feel like it is impossible, then give up. Sadly, most people give up before they even really begin. Don’t be one of those people and complete what you start!

The fourth step:

Consider what your underlying emotions are and what your thoughts, innermost feelings, beliefs, and attitudes are towards this one area of struggle. Make a conscious decision to let go of the struggle and to embrace more effortless flow in this area. Take note of any “inner voice” that replies with fear and doubts if this is even possible. You can do it!

Meditate on it and affirm your choice to become lucky in this area and to let go of any payoffs for the past struggle.

You will find that your feelings shift from agitation, negativity, and attachment to peace and serenity. Calm and confident expectation attracts a new, fresh energy that attracts more similar energy into your life.

Once you have transformed this first area from, struggle to flow, move onto the next item on your priority list and repeat the same process. Take ownership of your feelings and transform them.

The fifth step:

Make a list of the most influential people in your life and consider how their lives are struggling or flowing. Share this concept with them and work together to implement these five steps. The more people you encourage, support and share with, the more flow you will experience.

Starting today, make a commitment to let go and transform one aspect of struggle per day and be sure to record your progress from scarcity to abundance.

Definitions and terms include those commonly used in GOLDZONE Programs. In some cases, complete definitions are not given, only the definitions that fit within the context of consulting, training and coaching are provided. A complete definition may be obtained by referring to a dictionary.